"Whose story is this, anyway?" glared Furlonger. "Shuddup when I'm interrupting, why can't'cha?" Regaining his composure, he continued. "The first time or two I had no trouble, because nothing happened. That's when I realized that there had to be a particle exchange medium while the condensers was cooling, and that's when I hit on..."

"Lime jello." Milo offered up without thinking. He heard Callie draw a sharp breath, and they both took hurried cover under the overhang of the long hardwood bar. Milo heard the loogie splat on the floor behind them.

"The trim had to be exactly right -- I figured out only afterward -- to hit that sweet spot right between time and space where everything happens..."

"Schrödinger's cat..." trailed Milo.

"Shuddup with the cat, damn you! Schrödinger was nothing -- so what if he could keep two women happy at the same time in the same house? His cat was a fucking snob. I hated that cat... I had Furlonger's infinitely fuckstruck bunnies! Infinite numbers of atomic nucleii independently knocked up in the same way at the same time. Way more momentous! But whose lousy one-trick kitty gets all the glory in the books?"

There was a long, moody pause.

"Well." Milo said. "It's all been very enlightening, I'm sure. But I'm not your boy. Your brains are obviously sub-par at this point, and so is my brawn. I'm gonna head further south, where nobody can find me. I've hidden the gizmo. Nobody can use it. Problem solved."

He tried to sound jaunty, but Furlonger snorted scornfully.

" Ja, right. Und wherever you go, there you are. Just remember that the reason I stopped here was because I finally realized wherever I went, the fabric was still ripped. And that no place is far enough south to get away from her, until the universe is fixed, like she wants. "

Furlonger gave Callie a despondent, vacant stare. He put his head in his hands and rocked it from side to side, his whole body visibly tilting with the effort. Then he moaned, "Why will she not anymore go away?"

He reached out a clawlike hand, grasped another shot glass, drank. As he clattered the glass back to the bar and picked up yet another, his eyes rolled back in his head and his chin lolled to his chest. He was silent for another long moment. Milo figured he might finally be ready to pass out. He looked around, ready to make a break for the door.

"Hah," he said, suddenly enunciating clearly "You're a fahrfluchten arschloch for even thinking you can get away with running away. The gods are almost certainly crazy, but they will not be trifled with."

He sloppily drained his glass, and placed it back on the bar with exaggerated care. That accomplished, his eyes rolled up into his head, and his body began to crumple and collapse in slow motion. His lips had moved once more as he fell, but his voice had receded to a slurred undecipherable mutter. Milo couldn't make it out, but thought he heard something like, "Schließlich. Finally... about fucking time!"

The delicate engineering equation of Furlonger's quixotic balance on the stool finally destroyed, he pooled jointlessly down to the floor. Like melting lime jello.

When Milo dropped centavos on the bar for his tab, the bartender shook his head, pushed them back over the bar at him, and pointed wordlessly out the door. He ignored Furlonger completely. Milo, loosed as if from a thrall, felt his legs suddenly all present and accounted for again.

He fled. He didn't wait to see what Callie did.

As he jogged back down the road toward Lenore, head reeling from the shots and Furlonger's revelations, he barely registered a small scooter motor somewhere in the distance on the other side of the village, behind him.